I take her chin between my thumb and forefinger, kissing her before pulling back and locking eyes with her. “Listen to me. I know you’re used to shitty people and shitty things happening to you. I get it, but believe me when I tell you how I feel.”
She doesn’t speak for a long moment, long enough that I wonder if she’s going to say anything at all. “I love you, too. As crazy and stupid as that is. I do.”
I kiss her then, hard. I may not know if the plan I have in the works is going to fix the trouble my brother is causing. I may not know how things with Tara and Roman are going to shape up. I may not even know how I plan to save my garage and what I’ll do if I lose it. But I know holding Sandra makes it all seem like background noise.
47
Sandra
As much as I know how quickly things could start shifting out of control, I’m happy. Every day I go to sleep thinking the buzz of joy from knowing Reid wants me and loves me will fade, or that something will come crashing down and turn it on its head, but it doesn’t come. Day after day goes by and the moments I spend with Reid and Roman start to make it seem like maybe I could rebuild if I lose the bakery. Before I saw only darkness and suffering if it was taken from me, now I know I have Reid by my side to stand with me. Even if we end up living out of a car, it would be together.
Still. I can’t ignore it much longer. The deadline to pay is coming, and if my plan to take advantage of the strawberry festival doesn’t work, I don’t know what else I can do. I’ll have to let the shop go. Reid might lose his business too. We’d be completely and totally doomed, and my biggest fear is the fresh, almost delicate feelings between us might not survive something like that, no matter how real they are.
I have to laugh at myself from time to time. He’s turning me into a lovestruck teenager. I feel like I’m saying and feeling all the things a woman my age would scoff at hearing. He’s the one. He’s mine--forever. The words bounce around my thoughts like rays of warm hope, only seeming to grow stronger with every passing day.
The last week has been wonderful, like something out of my dreams. Reid and Roman stop by the bakery during their lunch break and Reid sneaks me out back or into the walk in to steal kisses and sometimes more. I know he wasn’t kidding about wanting me to be pregnant, because he doesn’t miss any opportunities to try. Not that I’m complaining.
“Hello, cadet, this is Lauren. Do you read?”
I smile awkwardly, realizing I was just standing like a zombie and daydreaming. “Sorry,” I say.
“You may want to tell him to take it easy on you. I think Reid Riggins is banging you so hard your brains are turning to jello.”
I blush bright red. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, grabbing a tray of batter and moving it to the prep table with a grunt.
“Mhm,” says Lauren, folding her arms. “You know the walls of the walk-in aren’t soundproof. Right?”
My blush deepens. “Okay, okay. I get it. Can we not talk about this right now? I’m kind of trying to get everything ready for tomorrow and I need to focus.”
Lauren laughs. “Well, if you want to focus, you may want to stop daydreaming about Mr. Magic Cock.”
“Would you please not talk about Reid’s penis?”
Lauren grins. “Listen to you. Penis.” She rolls her eyes upward and waves her hands dramatically, imitating me in a ridiculously high pitched voice. “Oh Reid, please place your large penis inside my vagina. Perhaps you could penetrate me so deeply that the head of your manly erection presses against my cervix!”
“Stop it,” I laugh. “I’m not that bad.”
“Prove it then. Say ‘cock’.”
I shake my head, trying to laugh off her request. “Say it!”
“Cock!” I snap.
Mrs. Stevens looks up from her daily struggle between the danish and doughnuts. I cover my face with my hand, turning to Lauren and glaring.
Lauren bursts out laughing. “I didn’t tell you to yell it. Don’t look at me. You’re supposed to be the mature one here.”
“Well, if you’re done being totally inappropriate--”
“You’re the one yelling about cocks at two in the afternoon,” she reminds me conscientiously.
I slam a ball of batter down on the table and give her my best evil eye. I swear, being around Lauren is a test of willpower at times. “As I was saying. I’m going to need you here by five tomorrow morning. I want everything over to the Francis’ farmhouse by seven at the latest. I have a couple of the guys from the high school football team coming to help move the ovens into trucks.”
“Five in the morning, hmmm. Pretttty early. You sure, boss?”
“Lauren. You realize this is the only chance of saving the bakery, right? I don’t even have any idea if this can work, but it’s the only shot I have. So can you please just help me on this?”
She gives me a rarely genuine smile and squeezes my shoulder. “You know I’m always here for you, girl. Five in the morning. I’ll be here.”
I stand outside Tara’s door, holding my hand up to knock, but hesitating. I keep replaying what Reid said about her in my head. I can’t help thinking how right it seemed. Hasn’t my history with Tara been a long chain of attention and inattention? She reaches out to me and wants to be close when she needs something from me, and when she doesn’t, she pushes me away. I’ve just been too blind to see it, I guess. Still… I know she’s hurting. Whether she has tried to use me before or not, we have too much history for me to just let things linger this way. I have to at least try to patch things up or I’ll never forgive myself.
I knock.
A few seconds later, the door opens slowly. For the first time I can remember, Tara isn’t wearing makeup. Yes, she seems to have at least washed her hair and combed it and she’s wearing a cute outfit, but there’s no trace of mascara or concealer on her face. Not even a little blush. She starts to close the door when she sees me, but I put my hand on the door, pressing hard.
“Wait, please. Tara, I just want to talk.”
“And fuck my ex-husband,” she says, trying again to close the door.
“Tara, you’re letting me in there whether you like it or not.”
We have a brief, pitiful struggle over the door before I finally push my way inside. There’s a little bit of slapping and clothes yanking before we separate, breathless and glaring.
“What the hell!” yells Tara. “Did you come over here to beat me up or something? Because you know I could totally take you.”
I roll my eyes. “I said I just want to talk.”
“Yeah, and then you charged me like a wild animal.”
“You wouldn’t let me in,” I say, grinning a little.
Tara bites back a smile and sighs. “Fine. I’m going to have a drink. Do you want anything?”
“I’m okay,” I say, plopping down on the couch, which she has inexplicably put in the middle of the far wall, where it barely fits.
She sits down with a drink a short time later, swirling some kind of cocktail and squeezing a lime into it before taking a sip. “Okay, shoot. You came to talk. Let’s hear it.”
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry things between you and Mark didn’t work out. It wasn’t really fair for me to blame you for what Mark was doing. I know you had no say in it.”
She sips her drink, eyeing me over the rim of her glass. “Apology accepted. And I’m sorry for some of the things I said to you too.”
It’s not the best apology I’ve ever heard, but before the last few weeks, I was used to getting no apologies at all, so I’ll take it for now.
“I’m also sorry it wound up like this. Reid and I. I really care about him though, and my feelings for him have nothing to do with you.”
She takes a long sip of her drink and laughs to herself. “I think I always thought we’d get back together. Some stupid part of me thought dating his brother would wake him up and make him want to fight to have me back. I think all I did was push him farther away.
I guess we never were good for each other in the first place. I never really talked about it, but Reid is a good man.” She shakes her head, looking down at her drink thoughtfully. “He is a better man than I deserved. I guess that scared me. It made me feel inferior and insecure. So I did something stupid.”
“Even though it didn’t work out with Reid, you have Roman,” I say encouragingly. “You know Roman loves you. It’s important that you be there for him. He needs his mom.”
She raises her glass to take a sip and then grimaces, setting it down a little too hard on the end table and shattering it. “Shit,” she says, jumping up and hurrying to pick up the glass.
By the time I get up to her to help, she’s already crying, hot tears streaming down into her glass-filled hands. “I fucked it all up,” she sobs. I’m just a big, stupid fuck up.”
I kneel down, avoiding the glass and hug her. “There are other guys, but you only have one son. It’s not too late to change for him.”
She sniffs, looking down at her shaking hands and gets up to throw away the glass. She pauses in front of the cabinet and then opens the doors above the sink, reaching behind some plates to pull out a bottle of liquor. She opens it and pours it down the sink, following it with several other bottles of alcohol she produces from various places in the kitchen.
Before I leave she hugs me tightly. “You’re a good friend, Sandra. You deserve better than the way I’ve treated you all these years.”
I hug her back. “I’m ready to start over if you are,” I whisper.
As I’m leaving Tara’s house, I’m grabbed by the arm. I’m about to scream when I realize who it is.
“Mark? What are you doing? Let me go,” I snap, yanking my arm away from him.
He laughs off my discomfort, patting down the air to try to get me to calm down. “Look. I came by to tell you not to waste your time tomorrow. I know what you and your employees are planning. Let me tell you. It won’t work. Not a chance in hell.”
The corner of Mark’s mouth pulls up in a sneer and he hitches his pants, leaning close enough that I can smell his sour breath. “Tell me, Sandra. Do you honestly believe you’re going to sell enough fucking baked goods to get the money? Come on. Be realistic.”
I purse my lips and force a tight smile. “If you didn’t think there was a chance of me raising the money, why are you creeping around at night trying to talk me out of doing it?”
He runs his tongue along the bottom of his teeth, nodding his head and grinning. “I see why my brother likes you. Tell you what, Sandra. Once this all blows over, you ever get tired of oil stains on your sheets you give me call, okay? Here’s my card.”
I look down at the card, smile politely, and drop it in a pile of dog poop by the sidewalk. “What do you know,” I say. “It blends right in.”
48
Reid
Mack Perry looks at me seriously from across the table. The rising sun blares in through the window behind him and he’s tapping a pen against a stack of papers. “You’re sure you want to do this, Riggins?”
Roman and I are in his hotel room and Mack is a little hard to take seriously in the t-shirt and basketball shorts he’s wearing, but his eyes are all business.
“Yeah. Give me the pen,” I say.
Mack tilts his head and then nods, sliding the stack of papers and the pen to me. He jabs in a few spots, indicating the places I need to sign. A few squiggles of the pen later, It’s done. Simple as that. Roman smiles up at me.
“Can I sign, Daddy?”
“Not now Bud,” I say, struggling to find the energy to smile. I settle for ruffling his hair and looking down at the stack of papers, wondering if I’m the biggest idiot in the world or if I’m doing the right thing. Fuck. I really wish I knew.
“I’ll hold on to these, okay Riggins? ‘Til tonight. That way if her plan works you can call me and I’ll just toss these in the shredder.”
I stand, leading Roman toward the door. “Thanks, Mack. Somehow I doubt you’ll be hearing from me.”
Roman and I pull up to the strawberry shortcake tent Sandra and the girls are setting up. There’s a big oven and a huge prep table already sitting in the grass and the oven is linked to a portable generator by some precarious looking extension cords held together partly by duct tape.
“I have some cords in the truck that won’t blow you up,” I say, kicking at the cord.
“Good to see you too,” Sandra quips. She looks beautiful. Her cheeks are flushed and I can see the hope in her face. She thinks this is going to work.
“So,” I ask. “Who can I talk to about buying some shortcake?”
“You don’t even have any strawberries.”
I put a hundred dollar bill down on the prep table. “No change.”
“Reid…” she says.
“Take the man’s money!” says Lauren. “Hold onto it incase he doesn’t pay child support.”
I quirk an eyebrow at Sandra, who looks away, cheeks growing redder. “Something you’re not telling me?” I ask.
“No, she just knows there’s a possibility. Trying to keep something from Lauren is harder than keeping a secret from the inquisition. She’s crafty.”
I chuckle.
“She told me too, sorry Reid,” says Jennifer, who pops out from behind the big oven.
“Yeah, well, Roman and I will go get that cord and bring it back.”
“You didn’t even take any shortcake,” Sandra complains.
I smirk. “How much are you charging?”
“Four dollars a setup.”
I wince. “So that’s, what… Like two or three thousand you need to sell?”
Sandra swallows hard. “I wasn’t going to get the calculator out or anything, but well, yeah. Probably around there.”
I spend the next twenty minutes safety proofing the ridiculous setup Sandra and the girls have put up. I replace the faulty extension cords, give the generator some oil it desperately needs, tweak the pressure settings so the thing doesn’t explode, and I shove a two by four under one end of the oven to keep it level on the uneven grass beneath. It’s not perfect, but I don’t have to worry a freak accident is going to wind up getting Sandra hurt. Or any of the others, for that matter.
The Francis’ have set up their little festival as a real tourist attraction. They have the whole Francis brood from two feet tall to six seven, in the case of Vaughn Francis, out directing traffic. They also make sure to plan this little shindig right before a big college game just a few cities over. All the families heading up the day before see the signs, the Francis farm isn’t far off the road, yeah. Big bucks. They even have it set up where families who’ve gathered their allotted basketful of strawberries are funneled out one exit, forcing them to pass through the gift shop on the way back to their cars, where they can buy souvenirs, t-shirts, and anything else the Francis’ can think up.
I’ve always hated it. The locals call it lookie-lou season, because all day and for most of the day tomorrow, there will be minivans and SUVs crawling through town while screaming kids in the back fight over who gets to watch what on the seat-mounted screens. It’s like a fucking plague, and until this year, I’ve always wished some kind of natural disaster would divert traffic and spare us all the annoyance. Now… Now I’m looking at every football fanatic and tourist like dollar signs that might let Sandra save her dream. And I’m hoping with everything I have that it works.
I drag Roman with me inside the strawberry patches and let him watch me a couple times before I let him try to snag some customers. Our first target is a woman and her son. She looks about thirty and her son is just a little older than Roman. I gently tap the back of Roman’s chest with my hand and groan loudly.
“Boy, oh boy,” I shout. “I thought the strawberries were good on their own. But once I put them on that fresh made shortcake with the handmade whipped cream? Didn’t get any better. Right, little guy?”
Like the complete badass that my son is, Roman belches as if on command, clu
tching his stomach. He grins up at me and I smile down, hugging him to my side.
I act like we’re heading back to get more strawberries, but listen closely as the little boy starts talking his mom into letting them get shortcake when their done.
“We will, honey. We will,” she says to him.
49
Sandra
We’re barely able to keep up as customer after customer joins the line out front for shortcake. Jennifer, Lauren, and I are all sweating already and it’s not even ten. I’ve already lost count of how many customers we’ve served and have had to send Jennifer to Red’s for smaller bills twice now. Part of me almost wants to go tell Reid and Roman to slow it down in there. The two of them are like customer magnets. I know most of the business is coming from them, because a very disproportionate amount of our customers are females, and the younger ones look longingly toward Reid, maybe hoping he’ll give them just a scrap more of attention because they took his bait.
Sorry girls. He’s mine.
The thought makes me smile to myself. Why should I be surprised that I feel possessive of him? I wanted to have his baby even when I it might have been the result of a drunken accident. My body was obviously very sure about my compatibility with Reid way before I was. Now that we’ve had a little more time to settle into what our lives could be like together, my mind is catching up. And it’s catching up with frightening speed.
I try to stop myself from thinking girlish, silly thoughts, but don’t succeed. I picture wedding dresses, raising children with Reid, moving into our own place together with a little fence. Maybe even a puppy. I picture it all and just behind the dream is reality. Dark, ever-present, and threatening. Reality could come crashing through at any moment, and if this little scheme of mine doesn’t work, everything might shatter with it.
Knocked Up and Punished Page 33